And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch. And Tiffany had thought: Where's the evidence?

The disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailor who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world.

I can't be talking to a tree. If I was talking to a tree I'd be mad, and I'm not mad, so trees can't talk.

The librarians were mysterious. It was said they could tell what book you needed just by looking at you, and they could take your voice away with a word.

Ye ken, we've been robbin' and running aroound on all kinds o' worlds for a lang time, and I'll tell ye this: The universe is a lot more comp-li-cated than it looks from the ooutside.

I mean, you're right about the fire and war, all that. But that Rapture stuff--well, if you could see them all in Heaven--serried ranks of them as far as the mind can follow and beyond, league after league of us, flaming swords, all that, well, what I'm trying to say is who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them? If that's your idea of a morally acceptable time, I might add.

Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known.